TV Software

For DVB-T, ATSC and DVB-S tuners

Features

SichboPVR is a hardware-accelerated TV application that is designed to work with DVB-T, DVB-S and ATSC tuners and provide a fun and exciting television viewing experience.

Clean UI

Designed with a clean and simple UI your grandmother could use. SichboPVR v3 was built from the ground up with a custom Direct3D video presentation and user interface framework for smooth-as-butter DXVA2 video and sharp scalable graphic composition.

Community provided localization

Changelog

3.0.0.159

2016-08-23

Internal tidy up, courtesy of the folks over at PVS-Studio. Seems like a really decent static code analyser.

2016-06-03

3.0.0.158

Addresses a couple of build 156 issues collected throughout the week. This will be the last release for a while.

2016-05-27

3.0.0.157

Turns out I forgot to test XP. 157 fixes 156 from yesterday. Sorry about that.

2016-05-26

3.0.0.156

New PiP capability -- Ctrl + Click in guide to play multiple channels in new windows without affecting the main player, if you have enough tuners or all of the channels are on the same transponder. Live playout only for now.

New Color Scheme Designer under Setup > Advanced.

New SAT>IP option under Setup > Network. It treats servers like a normal tuner and controls front-ends explicitly. Each enabled virtual tuner will show up as a discrete device under Setup > TV Sources, available for the usual channel scanning, slave configuration etc.

You can now search by channel name in the guide (start typing letters.) This meant that a few shortcuts had to change to free up all letter keys for normal typing. See F1 for latest shortcuts.

Keypad +/- for volume.

I'm now collecting more information about tuner drivers for better reporting on the homepage (driver name, manufacturer, version and date.) Will revisit the "supported devices" report once a reasonable amount of new data has accumulated.

Multi-tuner refinements -- if a device fails to open or lock the signal during recording, it'll try use slaves instead. EPG scanning now happens in the background on a slave tuner when available.

Channel headings can now be selected in the guide, which displays the full lineup for that channel.

New option under Setup > Advanced to use *.sichbo-pvr file extensions instead of *.ts for recordings. Some Windows 10 installations struggle to thumbnail mpeg2 *.ts files and lock up Windows Explorer in the process -- so this is one work-around.

New start up options to play, open guide, or do nothing.

Update EPG button in Explorer.

MPEG2 DXVA1 support for Windows XP.

Fixes a few errors collected over the past few months.

2015-09-07

3.0.0.149

Addresses a few bugs collected over the last couple of weeks (EBU subtitles, occasional crashes.)

Deleted the avcodec dependency that was being used for generating thumbnails.

Fix for playback of in-progress recordings.

Deprecated "Minimise to tray" and replaced with a "Minimise to tray instead of exiting" option. So from now on, just hit the close/x button instead of minimise. To actually shut off the program, use the system tray icon > exit option.

F1 tab persistence.

Transponder dump context menu now shows up even if there's no channel boxen in the list.

Fixed broken left/right time navigation for epg.

Playback will no longer automatically start when a scheduled record begins, and live TV is off. Some people were leaving the app open but in a stopped state.

Fix for Windows shortcuts that are configured to "Run: Maximised".

I've split up the record queue/history in the series editor.

More accurate/streamlined frequency sharing and telemetry.

Added a confirmation/prompt for series deletions.

Setup > Advanced > XMLTV support. Just select your data folder, then tick whichever sources need it XMLTV. The xml schema's channel-ids should auto resolve based on channel number/callsign, or you can specify them manually in individual channel settings. XMLTV folder is checked for new data every time regular background EPG scanning occurs or when you "scan now" under F1 > Status.

MCE remote improvements (Windows/guide/recordings button should open the app from system tray now under Win 10.)

Missing channels fix for some users.

Manifest updated for correct Win 10 OSVersion detection.

The time field is now optional when scheduling "Specific dates and times", so you can catch a particular day, but for any time slot.

Added some extra keyboard shortcuts.

Auto-backup/restore in the event of corrupted settings after a system restore or crash.

Couple of subtitle fixes.

Added a work-around for some drivers that weren't pumping data. Thanks to Fred over at Hauppauge for his help on that one.

Automatically expunges recording history entries after 14 days, also does some housekeeping on the series list under recordings.

2015-04-05

3.0.0.139

Improvements to sleep handling with a workaround for drivers that don't handle sleep gracefully. Under the Setup > Device Name > Advanced you can now untick "Close this device when not in use".

Record > Schedule > Series editor refinements.

New "Add SichboPVR to the Windows start-up folder" option under Setup > Advanced.

Minor fixes.

2015-03-20

3.0.0.138

Setup > Advanced > Pad recordings option.

Setup > Advanced > Minimize to tray option.

2015-03-08

3.0.0.137

Fix for some DVBS cards not switching diseqc port.

Setup > Advanced > Wake the computer for recordings. You need to configure Control Panel > Power Options > Sleep > Allow wake timers for it to work though.

2015-03-05

3.0.0.136

DLNA/UPnP Server + Client.

Minor refinements.

Note that mileage in terms of timeshift seeking on dlna players will vary. My Samsung bluray won't seek at all, neither will XBMC or Windows Media Player, but a relatively modern (2013) Sony Bravia TV media player supports it OK-ish, even though it doesn't really implement the DLNA spec "sliding window" correctly. At bare minimum, most players should be able to at least watch live tv and pause/resume. UPnP EPG containers are implemented but the only client I'm aware of that supports UPnP EPG is SichboPVR itself. Evidently you can now run SichboPVR as a background server and then configure thin clients on your home network to sync with it. DLNA Recording Service is disabled for time being though.
There's also an "Add firewall rule" under Setup > Network so it can automatically fix the windows firewall rule with each new version update.

2015-01-12

3.0.0.134

Updated expiring code signing certificate.

2015-01-11

3.0.0.133

Tvheadend support (EPG/play/timeshift only for now.) Massive thanks to mpmc for helping me get linux/tvheadend set up and for all of his tireless testing. Also perexg for some useful insights into tvheadend.

Channel Logos (automatically searches the picons.bitbucket.org library, please contribute to their great little project if you can.) If you don't like logos you can disable them under Setup > Advanced. See sichbopvr.com/help#logos for more details.

Other little fixes and refinements.

2014-12-19

3.0.0.132

Workaround for Windows installations that are missing ISO 8859-14 Celtic code page data (which is all of them as far as I can see.)

2014-12-15

3.0.0.131

Text decoding support for
ISO/IEC 8859-10 (Nordic)
ISO/IEC 8859-11 (Thai)
ISO/IEC 8859-14 (Celtic)
KSX1001-2004 (S Korean)
... that should be all of them now.

2014-12-08

3.0.0.130

New Setup > Advanced > "Use Broadcaster's Clock" feature. This allows for accurate EPG sync for recordings. The time shown inside the app becomes the exact time as reported by the broadcaster.

Timeshift can be toggled on/off using a new button on the control bar.

2014-10-10

3.0.0.123

DXVA2 fixes for some sources.

Addressed a couple of UX issues.

2014-08-19

3.0.0.122

Performance improvements.

Prevent Windows from starting background Automatic Maintenance due to "idle" CPU during playback.

2014-07-30

3.0.0.121

Energy efficiency improvements.

2014-07-11

3.0.0.120

Davix's "jump" fix (I hope.)

New "reset settings" option under advanced.

F1/help shows video card DXVA2 info, more shortcut keys.

Other minor refinements.

2014-06-23

3.0.0.118

H265/HEVC DXVA2 refinement.

Text encoding fix.

Another de-interlace fix.

2014-06-17

3.0.0.117

Tuning fix.

2014-06-15

3.0.0.116

Timeshift fixes.

Mpeg2 deinterlace fix.

2014-06-11

3.0.0.115

Win 8.0 fix.

Field testing 4k H.265/HEVC DXVA2 (Currently only latest generation Intel HD drivers support DXVA_ModeHEVC_VLD_Main, although it seems to be CPU-bound on a HD 4400 at present. Possibly a future driver update from Intel might move more of the work onto the GPU. Must select "(DXVA2 Video Decoder)" under advanced H265Video.)

2014-06-02

3.0.0.113

Better per-monitor high dpi support for win 8.1.

Background epg update refinement.

Minor fixes.

2014-05-29

3.0.0.112

New System tray icon.
Right click to "Run in background". It should be reasonably good about keeping tuners powered-down/off and CPU low unless it's actually recording or doing something. It will also fire up any connected tuners and try locking a known working E/EPG transponder every hour or so.

New TV > Recordings > Schedule area.
Define weekday/time/channel rules for a series, or just give it a bunch of different shows with a "recording priority" and let it go to town selecting the best from each timeslot from any old channel. The default setting is to not record any duplicate episode descriptions, but you can override for lazy broadcasters who always put in the same generic description.

You can also click "Create a series or show manually" if no EPG data exists and use the "Specific channel(s) and time(s)" option and un-tick "Only record if guide data matches dates/times".

Sources.xml automatically updates via www based on live NIT data from other users.

UI tweaks.

2013-08-27

3.0.0.74

Custom channel sorting / list renaming (see Setup > Channels.)

2013-08-24

3.0.0.73

F5 to toggle desktop "mini mode".

Better use of space on the guide channel names.

2013-05-31

3.0.0.39

Fix for some hardware drivers that may encounter "glitches" or "skipping" due to slow behaving signal statistic updates.

ATSC PSI fixes.

Fix for REALTEK DVBT devices.

2013-05-26

3.0.0.28

Reinstated GoToN feature w/ controller.

ATSC fix.

Scanning tweaks.

2013-05-20

3.0.0.27

Localisation bug fix.

Touch input refinement.

2013-05-17

3.0.0.23 - (first general public preview)

F1 to bring up advanced options.

Haven't been able to find anyone to test DVB-T/C/ATSC yet. Maybe someone can give it a crack and let me know if it works.

Customisable colour schemes are planned.

Known Working TV Devices

The list below is based on live user telemetry.

Device makers are notoriously bad at writing compliant bda drivers. If SichboPVR doesn't lock any frequencies, or if it locks and no channels are found, you should complain to your vendor. Feel free to have vendors e-mail me directly (simon@sichbo.ca) and I can assist them with debugging.

Devices having an OK sign should be alright, assuming that you're running the same reported OS and particular vendor drivers. Devices with an exclamation sign have never successfully scanned in channels.
Neither indicator is 100% accurate but this is merely intended as a rough guide. The reason for no lock could be signal related.
If an 'OK' device doesn't work for you, contact the vendor for different drivers.

Digits after each device indicate the number of positive or negative telemetry scans that I've received.